July 24, 2012 "Asia
Times" --
German intelligence estimates that "around 90" terror attacks
that "can be attributed to organizations that are close to
al-Qaeda or jihadist groups" were carried out in Syria between
the end of December and the beginning of July, as reported by
the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). This
was revealed by the German government in a response to a
parliamentary question.

In response to the same question, the German government admitted
that it had received several reports from the German foreign
intelligence service, the BND, on the May 25 massacre in the
Syrian town of Houla. But it noted that the content of these
reports was to remain classified "by reason of national
interest", Like many other Western governments, Germany expelled
Syria's ambassador in the immediate aftermath of the massacre,
holding the Syrian government responsible for the violence.

Meanwhile, at least three major German newspapers - Die Welt,
the FAZ, and the mass-market tabloid Bild - have published
reports attributing responsibility for the massacre to
anti-government rebel forces or treating this as the most
probable scenario.

Writing in Bild, longtime German war correspondent Jurgen
Todenhofer accused the rebels of "deliberately killing civilians
and then presenting them as victims of the government". He
described this "massacre-marketing strategy" as being "among the
most disgusting things that I have ever experienced in an armed
conflict". Todenhofer had recently been to Damascus, where he
interviewed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for Germany's ARD
public television.

Wring in Die Welt, Alfred Hackensberger noted that Taldo, the
sub-district of Houla where the massacre occurred, has been
under rebel control since December 2011 and is in an open plain,
making it unlikely that "hundreds of soldiers and Assad
supporters" could have entered the village to commit the
massacre. (An abridged version of Hackenberger's report also
appeared in Die Berliner Morgenpost.) Hackensberger visited
Houla to conduct investigations for his report.

He also interviewed an alleged eyewitness - identified simply by
the pseudonym "Jibril" - at the Saint James Monastery in Qara,
Syria. In contrast to an earlier report in the FAZ, which had
claimed that the victims were largely Shi'ites and Alawis,
Jibril told Hackensberger that all of the victims were Sunnis
"like everybody here". By his account, they were killed for
refusing to support the rebellion. Jibril added that "a lot of
people in Houla know what really happened" but would not say so
out of fear for their lives. "Whoever says something," he
explained, "can only repeat the rebels' version. Anything else
is certain death."

While traveling in the region of Homs, Hackensberger heard
similar stories about the conduct of the rebels. One - now
former - resident of the city of Qusayr told him that not only
were Christians like himself expelled from the town, but that
anyone who refused to enroll their children in the Free Syrian
Army had been shot. Hackensberger's source held foreign
Islamists responsible for the atrocities. "I have seen them with
my own eyes," he said, "Pakistanis, Libyans, Tunisians and also
Lebanese. They call Osama bin Laden their sheikh."

A Sunni resident of Homs told Hackensberger that he had
witnessed how an armed group stopped a bus: "The passengers were
divided into two groups: on the one side, Sunnis; on the other,
Alawis." According to Hackenberger's source, the insurgents then
proceeded to decapitate the nine Alawi passengers.

That the German government would cite national interest in
refusing to disclose its information concerning the
circumstances of the Houla massacre is particularly notable in
light of Germany's support for the rebellion and its political
arm, the Syrian National Council (SNC).

While France, the United Kingdom, and the United States have
figured as the most visible Western powers supporting the
rebellion, Germany has been quietly playing a major role behind
the scenes. According to a new report in the FAZ, the German
foreign office is working with representatives of the Syrian
opposition to develop "concrete plans" for a "political
transition" in Syria following the fall of Assad.

John Rosenthal is a journalist who specializes on European
politics and transatlantic security issues. His website is
Transatlantic Intelligencer

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